


Coping Strategies

by CenozoicSynapsid



Category: 19th Century Paleontology RPF
Genre: Caper Fic, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mormonism, Paleontology, Skull Theft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 12:51:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17022963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CenozoicSynapsid/pseuds/CenozoicSynapsid
Summary: Edward Drinker Cope left his skull to Science. Science should have taken better care of it...(There will be hymns, gay crushes and Uintatheriums. Uintatheria? Who even knows, right?)





	Coping Strategies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fluorescentgrey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluorescentgrey/gifts).



“That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard,” I say.

“Does that mean you won’t do it?”

E. A. Flaherty stands five and a half feet tall, provided you don’t press down too hard on the top of her head, because at least three inches of that is springy brown hair. She’s not the least bit scary unless you know her.

I’ve known her since she was five and she scares the crap out of me.

We are sitting on the porch of her mom’s trailer, which is located just outside Lewistown, Montana, which is located around two hours from Billings, which is located around a light year from literally anything. E. A. hates living with her mom, which she’s been doing since she finished college. She has a degree in paleontology which qualifies her for a graduate program at MSU she can’t afford, plus sixty million billion dollars of student loan debt. She hates three things about living here: she can’t drink, she can’t date and her mother calls her by her given name, which is Edith Ann.

“You’re serious,” I say. “You want to steal the skull of Edward— uh—”

“Edward Drinker Cope,” she says. “Are you in, Lee, or aren’t you?”

She fills in a little background, which is the kind of thing she’s always doing, because she is a nerd. Edward whatsisname, I learn, discovered 56 species of dinosaur, plus a bunch of other stuff that only a nerd like E. A. could possibly hope to keep track of. Then he died and left his body to science. Science, being unappreciative, stored his skull in a cabinet at the University of Pennsylvania. As far as anyone normal is concerned, that should be the end of the story, but E. A. has heard on nerd Facebook that a guy named Louie Psihoyos has “borrowed” it and gone on a road trip.

“Borrowed?”

“Checked it out of the library and skipped town.”

“You can do that?”

“Apparently. He’s making a movie about dinosaurs or something. Taking Cope back to his old dig sites.”

“Which will give you—”

“Us.”

“Give us a chance to... steal his head?”

“Well,” says E. A. “It’s not like it belongs to this Psihoyos guy either. So, you in?”

“Since when has a little craziness been a problem?”

* * *

Here’s why I’m in: E. A. spent our high school years as my self-appointed personal security. In the course of her duties, she punched three people, one of them in the crotch. On the first day of our sophomore year, in full view of about half of our grade, she told my brother Jason that if he used the word “faggot” one more time, she was going to slash his tires. She got suspended for that, but on the other hand, I don’t think Jason said a single thing to me for six more months.

I have never stolen anything before, and what I imagine is something like this: we point a gun at Psihoyos, grab the skull from him and then drive off in a cloud of dust. Tires screech. There are sirens and finally we wind up in a shootout with the police, during which we both die.

Luckily, this is not E. A.’s plan. Her idea is that we go to Bozeman, where Psihoyos and his crew will be hanging out with the grad students from MSU. She still knows the whole crowd, because she interned at a bunch of digs before she graduated last year. They’ll probably be drinking heavily, because that is what there is to do in Bozeman. We create a distraction somehow and switch out the skull for another skull, which E. A. will acquire from an anatomical supply company or something. We sell the skull. Nobody dies.

“Who are we selling the skull to?”

“This Chinese guy,” says E. A. nonchalantly. “He’s a minerals executive.”

“You know a Chinese minerals executive?”

“Not… as such. That’s where Bradley Gunderson comes in.”

“And who is Bradley Gunderson?” I ask. I am worried. Bradley Gunderson sounds like an accomplice, who will inevitably rat us out to the police, leading to the aforementioned shootout.

“He was in a bunch of my geology classes. He did an internship with a big Chinese company last summer and he said the executives over there were super corrupt and obsessed with trophies and stuff.”

“Exactly how well do you know this Bradley guy?”

“Oh, we hung out a lot. I think the other guys kind of froze him out because of the Mormon missionary thing. They thought it was weird.”

“Back up. I thought I heard you say _Mormon missionary_.”

“ _Ex_ -missionary. He did two years in China, it’s why he speaks the language.” E. A. smiles a little, which means she can tell what I am thinking.

“You are going to invite a Mormon. Missionary. To steal the skull of Edward… um…”

“ _Ex_ -missionary. Edward Drinker Cope.” As if that’s the most reasonable thing to explain right now, and in some sense I guess it is, because she talks for another minute and a half about why we need this guy and none of that makes any sense either.

* * *

Bradley Gunderson looks the way I’d expect from a Mormon missionary (ok, ok, _ex_ -missionary). He is a tall blond guy with that “I don’t tan, I burn” complexion, and he’s wearing an outfit from the boring side of an undertaker’s closet. The dorky outfit is hiding the fact that he's pretty built, and I'm reminded yet again that the hottest guys are always straight. I figure it’s fifty-fifty whether he calls me “bro” and goes in for the high-five, or tries to convert me to the true church of—

“Uintatherium! Cope, Marsh and Leidy all found these skulls around here and gave them competing names, but have you seen these little sketches Cope drew of it, which are wrong because he thought it had a trunk, but they’re hilarious! Have you seen these things?”

He shoves his phone in front of me and pages through, apparently, five or six _other_ Edward Drinker Cope sketches before he gets to the one he wants.

“Go back to the part where you have a gallery of Edward whatsisname photos on your phone?”

“Edward Drinker Cope. I’ve been doing research,” he says, grinning proudly. He’s even cuter when he smiles.

“Did E.A. actually explain… um, did she say specifically what she…”

“Sure! And, well, I don’t feel absolutely great about this.”

There’s a long pause. I start off being glad that something is capable of denting Bradley Gunderson’s irrepressible Mormon enthusiasm, but by the end of it I feel almost sorry for him.

“I didn’t get into a Ph.D. program the way E. A. did,” he says, shaking his head. “If I want to go, I’m going to have to pay for a masters first. Cope had money issues all his life. He’d respect a couple of paleontologists doing what it takes.” He doesn’t sound sure.

“Why’d you do all the research?” I ask him.

“Oh! The research. We don’t need any of that to— to do the thing.” He looks pained again. “That was just for fun. Here, look at Cope’s plesiosaur drawing.”

They have googly eyes and long noodle necks. They lie on a flat sandy beach, two of them lovingly entwined with one another like some sappy Disney fantasy.

“That’s ridiculous,” I say, and then Bradley Gunderson starts talking about mating rattlesnakes and how male giraffes fight each other and how Cope was a genius herpetologist and this might just be how actual plesiosaurs actually behaved.

Somewhere in the middle I learn over to E. A. and whisper: “Did this guy just drink, like, five cups of coffee?”

“Mormons don’t drink coffee,” she whispers back, and I find myself considering something which is more horrific than going on a heist with a missionary, possibly even more horrific than rattlesnake sexytimes: the possibility that Bradley Gunderson is literally always like this.

* * *

Five days later, I am sitting at a cheap college bar with E. A., a bunch of grad students, and Louie Psihoyos. The original plan involved hoping everyone would get drunk on their own, but E. A. has decided we should encourage irresponsible behavior by acting really interested in geology (her), buying a bunch of drinks (me), and loitering nervously outside, refusing to consume the demon alcohol (Bradley). Wanton drunkenness isn’t really my thing, but I have actual body mass, unlike E. A, and Bradley was adorably nervous about making it clear that he didn’t drink, because Mormons don’t drink, because, no offense, but...

Psihoyos, on the other hand, does drink. He has some years on all of us, but he’s spent them as an adventure photographer for National Geographic; he has a barrel chest and one of those vests with a million pockets full of, I don’t know, film, or knives, or dinosaur teeth, in case you’re in a bar somewhere and someone (E.A.) has just asked to see some dinosaur teeth.

“Hey,” I wave at the server. “Can we get another pitcher of Coors?”

I feel hot and a little tired. I’m doing my part for the cause.

Psihoyos holds out some hadrosaur teeth, which are little ridgy things. The nerds pass them around, making appreciative comments in nerdspeak. They look like little rocks to me.

“They look like little rocks to me,” I say.

“You can tell they’re teeth by putting them in your mouth,” says one of the grad students. I think his name is Gary, or perhaps Barry. “Bob Bakker does that.”

“Nah,” says another one, who might be Steve. Two of the students are named Steve, so I figure I have good odds. “That’s a myth.”

“He really does that!”

“Sure. But they don’t taste any different, it just gets the dust off them.”

Someone hands me a tooth, and I put it in my mouth. It doesn’t taste any different from a normal rock, I guess, although I suppose it’s been a long time since I put a rock in my mouth. I reach for my beer to wash away the taste, then for the pitcher for a refill. The pitcher is empty. Our cunning plan is working.

I wave at the server again and order a round of shots.

By the time they arrive, the center of the table is occupied by a mahogany box which Psihoyos has pulled out from underneath.

“Pour us one more for the guest of honor,” he says. He lifts the lid off the box and E. A.’s eyes go round.

“Is that—”

“I know this one!” I shout. “It's Edward Drunker Cope!”

E. A. gives me a look. I don’t care. I feel great about this and I give her a big smile, which makes me feel less great, because turning my head is all of a sudden making me seasick. I will be fine. All I have to do is look slowly towards a fixed vantage point, like the eyes of poor Edward, who has been sawn in half across the braincase and is also missing his front teeth. I feel very sympathetic about this. Edward lost all his money and was ridiculed in the newspapers and then his teeth fell out, and now we are going to steal his head. I start to apologize to Edward about all of this, but there is an ugly ringing in my ears which makes it difficult to get a word in edgeways.

“Dude,” says one of the students, tugging at my sleeve. “Dude, the fire alarm!”

“Hey, uh, Steve,” I say. “Oh. Oh, that is the fire alarm, isn’t it?”

Steve (odds are) leads me gently towards the flashing exit sign, which also hurts my head, and as I avert my eyes from it, I see E. A. slipping her newly-ordered anatomy supply skull into the mahogany box and burying Edward in the bottom of her backpack. Mission accomplished. I slump against E. A.’s decrepit Jeep and sigh in relief, partly at the successful heist but mostly because I’m not moving anymore.

* * *

It’s morning. I can tell this because it’s very bright, painful stabby blades-of-light levels of brightness, and my mouth feels like it’s full of hadrosaur teeth.

“Drink this,” says someone and shoves a glass at me. It’s cold and a lot of it misses my mouth and dribbles down my neck. I sit up and wipe it away with the sheet, grab the rest of the glass and drink it in about two swallows.

“Hey, E. A.,” I say. “Sorry about last night. Did I do anything embarrassing?”

“Nothing too unexpected,” says Bradley Gunderson.

I look around. This isn’t E. A.’s trailer, which, now that I think about it, makes a hell of a lot of sense, because her mom won’t let a guy sleep over and trying to explain “the gay thing” would not in any sense be an improvement. This must be Bradley Gunderson’s house, and in fact, there is no way this is a guest room. It’s way neater than mine, but there are clothes in the closet, Ansel Adams prints on the walls and a nice color shot of a blocky white building with a spire that is either a place of worship or concept art for a way less edgy remake of _Blade Runner_. On the bookshelf, old Little League trophies balance on top of _Cosmos_ and _The Dinosaur Heresies_. I’m sleeping in Bradley Gunderson’s bed.

“Did I throw up?” I say, looking around at the bed in case it’s obvious.

“Twice. But we got you to the bathroom.” He sounds warm and not at all judgmental, and now that he says so, I have blurry memories of leaning on someone warm and muscular— on him— and stumbling down a long, dark hallway, and him wiping my face off after.

“Oh, god. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You took one for the team. I had the easy part— all I did was pull the fire alarm.”

I can tell I’m starting to feel better because I am noticing once again that Bradley Gunderson is still in his sleepwear, which is some kind of white shirt and underwear. It shows off plenty of his legs, and the shirt keeps riding up to flash his abs as well. Once again, I ponder the probability that Bradley spends a fair amount of time in the gym, which leads me to the tempting mental image of Bradley working out. Does he lift weights? Does he get all sweaty and then shower afterwards? I bet he does.

He seems to notice me looking, and reddens a bit.

“Sorry about this. Give me a minute to get dressed and I’ll go make breakfast.”

He turns quickly toward the closet and starts leafing through a rack of identical white shirts, sizing them up by some criteria I’m too hung over to appreciate.

“No hurry,” I call from the bed. “You look pretty well covered up to me.”

“We usually cover up the temple garments. It’s a whole modesty thing,” he says from inside the shirt rack. Over the shirt rack, I notice, is a rack of ties. Because a paleontologist needs an astounding number of ties, which he can wear while sexily troweling away at his fossils. _Triceratops_ appreciate a smart wardrobe.

“It’s ok,” I say. “No hurry. Don’t mind me.”

I don’t want to be weird about the guy’s religion, although I have to admit that I am rapidly becoming more weird about the guy and his stupid buff hotness. Today I learned: “Mormon nerd” is not only a type, it might be _my_ type. If I get up, it occurs to me, I can go over to the closet, wrap my arms around him and help him button his boring shirt over his weird religious underwear, over his warm, muscular chest. I don’t do that, because it would be wrong.

Also if I stand up, I think I might be sick again.

So I lie in bed, sipping water, until Bradley Gunderson comes back with sourdough toast, scrambled eggs and a cup of rooibos, which he says is like tea except that Mormons can drink it and it tastes more like ass. (He says the first part. I mentally add the second part after I have a sip, but I drink the whole thing and say thank you anyway.) Then I put on one of Bradley’s boring shirts, and he hands me my clothes from last night, which look around how they deserve to look, and I thank him twice for everything, and then I stumble to my feet and lean on him for support because I’m still pretty lightheaded. And then I fuck the whole thing up.

Because, let’s review: I have just gotten out of a hot guy’s bed. I am wearing his clothes. He made me breakfast. I have just put my arm around said hot guy. There is a script here, a familiar context in which these events occur, a muscle memory that practically requires the next step. So I lean over and kiss him.

And then I stop, because I’m pretty sure that kissing boys is how Mormon missionaries get on the naughty list. But then, incredibly, he leans in to meet me. We’re still kissing. His lips are warm and his chin has a hint of stubble and he’s aggressive without being grabby. And we’re still kissing. I pull him closer. He is just as warm and muscular as I imagined, and, let’s be honest, also a way better kisser.

 _Then_ he pulls back and explains to me that I have fucked the whole thing up, or more precisely that God sends everybody certain challenges to enrich their spiritual journey and he has prayed about his particular burden and is still trying to decide what it means for him personally but in any case in his particular church they believe that it’s not consistent with a state of spiritual holiness to do things like… well, like...

“It’s ok,” I say, although this is actually a lie. And I get in my car and go home.

* * *

“So what exactly is Bradley Gunderson’s deal?” I ask E. A. We’re sitting in my room: it’s about a million degrees and my air conditioner can’t cope, but on the other hand her mom isn’t here to snoop around and ask us questions about Edward, who is sitting on the table between us because it seemed too awkward to shove him in the sock drawer.

“I don’t know,” she says. “He’s a good guy, but, like, he keeps certain things pretty close. I mean, I’d call any other guy Brad, wouldn’t you?”

I try thinking about him as ‘Brad’. It doesn’t work.

“I can’t even leave out the Gunderson,” I say. “How does he do that?”

“Some kind of weird Mormon force field. Why are you asking about him anyway? Has he been a jerk to you? Because I swear, I didn’t think he was like that.”

“Nah, nothing like that. I just wanted to know.”

“Do you have a crush on him?” E. A. looks at me closely, as if this information is written on my forehead in very small font. “Cope, tell Lee to stop crushing on straight boys.”

She picks him up and waggles him.

“Lee,” he says, in E. A.’s voice. “Stop crushing on straight boys.”

I smile very slightly.

“Actually, that wasn’t the issue.”

“But— _oh_.” Her eyes go nearly as wide as Edward’s. “Huh. Did you make out? Was it nice?”

“Briefly.” I roll my eyes. “He said a bunch of stuff about spiritual burdens and God and stuff.”

“That’s bullshit,” says E. A. “Want me to kill him?”

“It’s ok,” I say. Apparently this is a situation where I get to say that a lot, although in E. A.’s case I really mean it. This isn’t a problem she’s going to solve for me, and I don’t think it’s a problem I’m going to solve either. It’s all up to Bradley Gunderson, and, I suppose, Jesus or whatever.

“Also we need him to help us sell Eddie here.”

“True enough.’ She lifts the sawn-off skull cap. “Can we pick your brain, Professor Cope?”

“Put it back, E. A. The poor guy isn’t a toy.”

“I’m just nervous,” she says. “I hope we don’t screw this up. I really, really want to get out of the trailer and go to grad school.”

“You’ll be fine,” I say. “We already did the hard part. There’s no way we can screw it up now.”

* * *

Seven hours later, huddled at the bottom of a badlands canyon in the dark, hoping it’s too cold for rattlesnakes, it occurs to me that this might have been a little premature.

Everything starts off ok. Bradley Gunderson calls us and we head out to the meet, him and E. A. riding up front and me in the back. The Chinese executive has arranged for someone to meet us on the shoulder of a deserted state route in the middle of the night; it seems appropriate for criminal activity, not that any of us has any experience to go by. We have a long way to drive, and we try to have one of those painfully normal conversations in which all the participants say “cool” a lot to distract themselves from whatever it is they aren’t dealing with. Unfortunately, E. A. is viciously honest with everyone, I am terminally awkward, Cope is a skull in a duffel bag, and Bradley Gunderson’s only social skills are paleontology and Mormonism.

As the lights of town fade out behind us, we fall silent. E. A. fiddles with the radio and eventually finds a country station. The upbeat songs are cheering at first, then tinny, then grating. She turns it off again.

Our contact introduces himself as Mr. Tan. He’s wearing a dark suit and carrying a briefcase, but he has a prospector’s heavy tan and a nasty scar on one cheek which suggest unpleasant things about his job description. His car looks sidelong at E. A.’s Jeep and sneers about the “lower classes”.

The headlights light a pool of roadside and a line of short fencing. Beyond the fence, I can see a few red rocks and then the ground drops off into blackness in which I can just pick out the shadows of the hills. Bradley Gunderson speaks to Mr. Tan in Chinese. I didn’t think there was much left to discuss, but the conversation goes on for what seemed like forever. Finally, Bradley waves at me and I grab the duffel bag from the back seat.

And then somewhere in the distance, I hear sirens. They’re faint at first; they could be headed anywhere, except that we’re on a deserted stretch of road in the middle of the badlands at 2 am. I freeze, the strap of Cope’s duffel bag cold against my fingers. Mr. Tan reaches into his briefcase and pulls out a pistol, which he doesn’t point at us. This suggests he has muzzle control, which suggests that the pistol isn’t an executive toy or a prop, which is a bad thing. He says something in Chinese. He sounds angry. Bradley Gunderson answers. He sounds frightened.

The sirens get closer. I can see the police car around the next bend, flashing lights revealing little flickers of the landscape in weird, washed-out reds and blues. Mr. Tan almost-but-not-quite points the gun at Bradley and he asks what sounds like a question. Bradley doesn’t answer, and then he runs, so I run too.

* * *

So here I am, wherever “here” is. I try to calm down by taking stock of the situation. My pants are torn and the fence has scraped the hell out of my leg, but I don’t think I’m bleeding too badly. I’ve tripped over a variety of stones I couldn’t see, but at least I haven’t run off the edge of a butte and broken my neck. Mr. Tan hasn’t shot me. My breathing slows down a bit and my fists unclench, which is when I realize that I’m still carrying the duffel in one hand. I unzip it. Professor Cope stares back at me, his empty eye sockets eerie in the dark.

“Well, Eddie,” I whisper. “We’re fucked.”

“Is that you, Lee?”

The voice comes from a few yards away. It’s Bradley Gunderson.

“What the hell happened up there?” I ask him. He doesn’t know much. Apparently Mr. Tan thinks one of us sold him out to the cops. I know I didn’t, Bradley _says_ he didn’t, and the whole scheme was E. A.’s idea to begin with, so I don’t think this is true, but I have no idea why there were cops to begin with. Mr. Tan is probably not pleased that we kept Cope. If he got away from the police, Mr. Tan might well be looking for us. This isn’t good.

We wait quietly for about fifteen minutes. If Mr. Tan is wandering around out there, he’s doing so very, very quietly. He is probably too smart to be out here in the dark, where he could fall over a cliff and be eaten by coyotes. He is probably much smarter than us. I risk the light on my phone for long enough to try texting E. A. We have no reception. We are going to have to stay here until morning.

This is going to be awkward. Luckily, I am no stranger to awkward.

“What is it about your church?” I ask. “What makes all the stuff about burdens and challenges and stuff worth it?”

“It’s who I am,” he says. “It’s my whole family, like playing Nephites and Lamanites and eating jello on the holidays and all of us being together, way back to crossing the desert with handcarts. It’s the only true church, and I believe that, but I just like _church_ , as in actually going to church. Reading the stories, singing the hymns. I love choir. ‘If You Could Hie to Kolob,’ and ‘The Iron Rod’”—

“What?” I try to giggle quietly, in case Mr. Tan is still out there somewhere.

“What’s so funny?”

“Did you just say ‘My iron rod’? Isn’t that kind of, um…”

“Hold to the rod, the iron rod, tis strong and bright and true,” sings Bradley Gunderson softly. It’s a jaunty little tune. I fail at giggling quietly.

“That is the gayest hymn _ever_.”

“I… guess so? You know, I literally never thought about it like that. I just learned it as a kid and I always thought about what it was actually about, you know?”

“And what is it about?”

“There’s this vision of the tree of life. The path to the tree is long and narrow, but there’s a rod of iron you can hold onto to show you the way there. And there’s a big house full of people in fancy clothing, all laughing at the people holding onto the rod, but you’ve got to keep the faith.”

“So, gay people, we’re in the house, laughing at you?”

“I guess so.”

“Do I look like I’m laughing?”

“You look cold.”

“And you’re not going to come over here and put your arms around me, because that would be wrong.”

“Look at the stars,” says Bradley Gunderson. I look up. There aren’t any lights for miles. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many stars all at once. The universe is bright and beautiful and unimaginably big and very far away.

“We believe God cares about every single one of them. They all have a purpose, somehow.”

“And your purpose is to be lonely and miserable.” I sigh, and it turns into a shiver. The desert loses its heat fast once the sun goes down.

“What do you believe, Eddie?” I lift the skull out of the bag. It’s too dark to really make it out.

“Cope was a Quaker,” says Bradley. “I think they believe in being silent and listening to God— we have kind of the same thing, I guess.”

“We better try that, then,” I say. I sound a little angry and I guess I am.

I look up at the sky, at the galaxy spilled out across it like a million grains of sand, and I imagine worlds filled with dinosaurs and waterfalls and obsessive scientists who leave their bodies to science and hot ex-missionaries and crooked minerals executives and Uintatheriums. Uintatheria? Never mind. I let the anger go, for now. The place has its flaws, but overall it’s a pretty nice universe and I like it.

After a while, Bradley Gunderson comes over and puts his arms around me.

* * *

E. A. picks us up in her Jeep. She looks like hell, like she hasn’t slept all night, which apparently she hasn’t: she barely got away from the cops and then drove around all night looking for us. Once the sun came up, we found we weren’t that far from the road and cell phone reception. It’s a good thing we didn’t try to make it back in the dark, though. The path up was pretty treacherous; there’s crud all over us. Even Eddie’s duffel bag is full of little rocks and stuff that must have leaked in where I left the zipper open.

E. A. hugs me. E. A.’s hugs are always reassuring; there’s a lot of muscle behind them. When she holds onto something, she means to keep it. She glares at Bradley Gunderson a bit and then hugs him too.

We all need showers, so we head back to Bradley’s apartment, which is where the cops finally pick us up.

They’re pretty nice about it, all things considered. They let us shower and change before we head down to the station. They buy us Egg McMuffins and orange juice. I figure this is part of the interrogation technique, but they basically don’t interrogate me because they already know practically everything.

There’s a big operation under way, apparently; the Chinese minerals company is the real target, and I catch a hint that it’s Federal and super serious. Our deal is, we plead to trespassing and reckless driving. We give them back Eddie. We keep our mouths shut.

It’s a good deal and we take it.

* * *

Eddie goes back to Psihoyos, who finishes his documentary and returns him to the University of Pennsylvania. Psihoyos nominates him as the type specimen for humanity— the example human, basically. E. A. shakes her head.

“He barely has any teeth. Anyway, Linnaeus named _himself_ the type specimen, everyone knows that.”

“Yeah, everyone knows that,” I lie. (Nerds, right?)

* * *

E. A. and I do two weeks of highway cleanup as community service. Bradley Gunderson lives in Bozeman, near the University and he does his time down there. We don’t hear from him.

“I’m going to grad school,” says E. A. She wipes dust from her forehead with the back of her hand. She’s packed her frizzy hair under a bandanna. She’s wearing Doc Martens and a high-vis jacket over one of those vests with million pockets. She looks bad-ass and ready for the wilderness.

“I don’t care if I have to take on more debt,” she says. “I am moving out of my mom’s trailer and I am going to find some fucking dinosaurs.”

She stabs her highway cleaning pole through a discarded styrofoam cup and deposits it vindictively in her trash bag.

“Those dinosaurs don’t stand a chance,” I tell her. “I can see the journal paper now. _Chompus teethius: A new species of awesome dinosaur_ , by E. A. Flaherty.”

But it turns out not to be E. A. who gets her name in a journal first. I get an email about a year later, and at first I think it’s a mistake: I have no idea what _Frontiers in Earth Science_ is or why I would care. Nerd stuff. But I skim over it anyway, and halfway down the page I see it: _A new plesiosaur from the Judith River formation_ , by Bradley Gunderson. There’s another email right after it.

“Hi, Lee,” it begins. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking over the past year, and I guess I want to reach out to you and see if you’d like to talk. (It’s ok if you don’t. I’d understand.)

“I’m not quite as sure what I believe, these days. I believe in a God. And I think God gives us challenges to deal with. But I don’t think he means us to hate ourselves. Or be lonely and miserable.

“That trip with you and Eddie meant a lot to me. Especially after I went through those fragments in the duffel bag and realized that some of them were fossilized teeth. That’s what got me into the program, I think… my advisor was pretty excited to get a student who already had a major find. I named the critter after Eddie: _Polycotylus copei_. I think the great bonehunter would appreciate one final species.

“But if you come out here sometime, I’d love to show you the skeleton and the rest of the collection. We have some amazing stuff.”

The signature says “Bradley Gunderson, Ph.D. student, University of Alberta.” Under the signature is an attachment. It’s a sketch of two noodle-necked plesiosaurs, tangling their necks together, gazing into one another’s big googly eyes.

I call E. A. down at the University.

“Do you have plans for winter break?”

“Well, I was thinking I’d stay here, do some studying for my quals… what’s up, Lee?”

“I was thinking we’d drive to Alberta,” I say.

“Do you realize how far away that is?” she says.

“Yes.”

“What the fuck is in Alberta?”

“Bradley Gunderson, who is reconsidering some of his life choices.”

“That’s the _second_ craziest thing I’ve ever heard,” she says, and we both burst out laughing.

**Author's Note:**

> All the stuff about Cope's skull is 100% real. I got some of the details from David Wallace's "The Bonehunter's Revenge", and Psihoyos has a lot of pictures of Eddie [here](https://psihoyos.photoshelter.com/image?&_bqG=11&_bqH=eJxtUMtqAjEU_Rpn40ahtkXIIiap3ppHyWM0qyDOYK1UyygI8_XNHaQdagM5OY.chOQDypU8uWv7_KjWl2rt2iep4nK32h.mD.PpeDTCmRESd4zU1XXTVMOq2R8PdTPcnr7qApLj1IvBZKbUYMJJz.AcDc57VswDTVyzLf5WxX1V_F9l4GN3mc8xEmaC9jYmcAalsSB0zsBolOCSFVJQJ_hNvvW1M9YTS_Wy6F6aqObkknlwwibgJOAvnI1ctEy.Hj9pjkqwPlCZ6FxoFnFTkdgsQT44V280_FD78ksVUso8OdebZvtelF173iFD_AZ1Pnas&GI_ID=).
> 
> I am infinitely indebted to songofsunset, for helping with the Mormonism, and kalirush, for helping with the slash, and I apologize for any remaining errors.


End file.
